Monday, December 18, 2006

Nerdtivist, or is it Actinerd?

I'm just back from a two-week mission, learning about a new approach to development. While my head is screaming to let some of its content out, I think I'll let it sit for a while as I try to sort out the good parts from the details.

In the meantime, let me share some interesting articles I've recently found. They're all related to ICT for development.

Apparently, there's a gap between traditional activists and the FOSS (free and open source software) community. While the two may "frequently share ethical positions and social interests ranging from freedom of expression and cooperative organization to consumer rights, privacy, and anti-trust legislation, mostly the two groups remain unaware of each other." Why? Byfield in Linux.com shares what he thinks. It's somehow related to language (jargon) gap, domain of work gap, and even age gap.

This new license allows creators to make their works available for attributed free distribution (copies can be freely shared, providing the original creator is credited) in the Global South, while still retaining all copyright control in the Global North.

Here's another good quote:

We're trying to hack the copyright system, in the programmers sense of hack. Not to break it but make it function in ways it wasn't intended to work. That's not because we're opposed to copyright, but because we're opposed to copyright functioning in ways that don't benefit either the author or the end user. Copyright is meant to be a tool to promote invention

So why oh why does a gap still lie between the nerds and the activists?